Mishandling Kashmir: Learning little from history

Independent India and I are both septuagenarians, but since I am a trifle older, I take the liberty of indulging in some reminiscences on the nation’s 71st birthday. My recollections are focused on Kashmir where I was born, in a town called Anantnag.

I particularly remember the traumatic night of October 30, 1947 when India was 10 weeks old and I had just turned three. In my mother’s arms I, with two elder siblings, hid under bushes in our garden as bullets ricocheted off our cottage roof. We lived in Badgam village, 30 km from Srinagar airport. The fusillade was coming from surrounding hills, occupied by Pakistani kabailis (tribals), en route from Uri and Baramulla, hoping to capture Srinagar airport.

At dawn, we piled into the family horse-drawn tonga, with just the clothes on our back and fled to the airport, where RIAF DC-3 Dakotas were disembarking Indian troops. We clambered into a departing aircraft, which flew us to Delhi, and refuge, with relatives.

Growing up in lovely little towns of the Valley in post-independence decades was idyllic and I reluctantly parted from my parents in Leh in 1959, to join college and the Indian Navy. In Jammu and Kashmir, my playmates were all Kashmiris — of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faith. Our parents were friends; we ate in each others’ homes and celebrated festivals together. But even as children, we understood that Kashmir was not (yet) India, and that the average Kashmiri’s attitude towards India was ambivalent.

India provided huge financial assistance to Jammu and Kashmir: Food, education, clothing and medicine were either free or heavily subsidised. Kashmiris would accept the largesse, but tune in every evening to Radio Pakistan which invariably played on their religious heart-strings, spouting propaganda about “occupation” of Kashmir and “atrocities” by the Bharatiya fauj (Indian Army).

Kashmir’s first ‘Prime Minister’ (he was called Wazir-e-Azam) Sheikh Abdullah was the state’s tallest figure then; a friend of Nehru’s and a staunch secularist, he was the self-styled Sher-e-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir). In 1953 we were startled to hear that he had allegedly conspired with the Americans to become “King Abdullah” of an independent Kashmir. He was arrested and the Valley burst into flames.

I recall seeing my father, then Magistrate of Baramulla, coming home, bleeding from the head; there had been stone-pelting in the old town, as agitators waved Pakistani flags and shouted pro-Pakistan slogans.

While the 1950s and 60s may not have witnessed wild enthusiasm for India, there was neither hostility nor bitterness amongst Kashmiris.

However, an utterly unimaginative New Delhi had little to offer them, apart from money. As much as 95 per cent of the millions that India poured into Jammu and Kashmir never reached the impoverished Kashmiri. In the absence of a politico-economic strategy for creating jobs, industry or infrastructure, Indian money merely enriched Kashmiri politicians and aggravated popular resentment and alienation, which Pakistan exploited.

India’s maladroitness did not end here. A succession of Pakistani-orchestrated incidents, between 1963 and 1999, demonstrated the ineptness of our intelligence agencies, lack of civil-military coordination and the complete strategic bankruptcy of New Delhi. This depressing sequence included the theft of Prophet Mohammad’s sacred relic, seizure of Hazaratbal shrine, capture and burning of the Charar-e-Sharif shrine, expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, the Kargil War and hijacking of IC-814.

This reminiscence is not a history of Kashmir’s travails, but merely a reminder to those who profess shock at recent developments in the Valley that the Indian state has, since 1947, learnt nothing from history, repeated its mistakes and failed to convince Kashmiris that they are Indian.

The French have a cynical aphorism: “the more things change, the more they remain the same”. This Independence Day, let us introspect if this is true of India’s management of Kashmir.

(The author is a former chief of the Indian Navy and Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor.)

Montreal Protocol on ozone protection survives a hiccup

If you Google “Edmund Hillary” you will get seven million references to his summitting Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1952. But when you Google “George Mallory”, who made a gallant effort 30 years before that but who disappeared on the treacherous slopes, you get nearly 17 million references. It is still a mystery if George Mallory died on the way to summit or while descending after scaling it.

The world is more excited about failures and the mysteries that surround them. It takes more interest in investigating failures than successes. The investigation gets sensational when the post-success enquiry doubts the success itself. No wonder that Sherlock Holmes is more popular than Shakespeare.

A similar mystery-drama is now being played out at United Nations on the Montreal Protocol on the Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Crafted in 1987, the Montreal Protocol has proved to be different because it has successfully delivered — and delivered in time. In 2010, as stipulated in the rules of this universally-ratified environmental treaty, all the production of chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, the main ozone depleting substance (ODS), was halted in all the producing countries, including India and China. Today, 99 percent of all ODS, including those other than CFCs, have been phased out in developed and developing countries as per the unanimously agreed time-table.

A UN scientific assessment panel confirmed in its 2018 report that concentration of all ODS in the atmosphere was declining as a result of the Montreal Protocol being implemented. Further, it revealed that the ozone layer — the earth’s life shield — was well on the recovery path.

The singular success of the Montreal Protocol is considered an example of what humanity can achieve to reverse environmental degradation.

And then came a jolt.

A paper published in the prestigious science journal Nature, on May 17, 2018, stated that the concentration of CFC-11, one of the two most abundant ozone-depleting ODS, controlled by the Montreal Protocol, “have unexpectedly stopped its decline and in fact increased in recent years despite a global ban on production in 2010”.

So why was this happening? The best scientific brains as well as brash media and brandishing NGOs started brimming with probable answers.

Though production of CFC 11 had stopped in 2010, its stocks from legally produced quantities before January 1, 2010 — the date of global phase out of CFC 11 — continue to emit in the atmosphere, as was expected. The legal stocks in turn can come from two sub-sources: First, the storages of the CFC 11, if those existed, and second, the equipment and the products that contained CFC11 — air-conditioning in commercial buildings and the insulating foams that are blown with CFC11. At its peak, about 350,000 metric tonnes of CFC11 were produced globally per year for such and other minor uses.

The Nature report clearly indicated that first beep of slowing down the decline, in reality, came in 2012. But scientists, overtaken by the successful worldwide closure of CFC 11 production, took some time to ensure that the slowdown was real and not a mistake in measurement. But then, after a longer investigation using updated models, they confirmed the slowdown and said it corresponded to about 13,000 tonnes of CFC 11 being added per year to the huge atmospheric cauldron. That is considered too large an amount to have come from stocks or “banks” — as termed in the Montreal Protocol’s parleys. So, the answer by rule of elimination, pointed towards the new production facility, illegally run somewhere.

Where exactly this production is based has become the subject of international curiosity and is reverberating in the global meetings of the Montreal Protocol.

One more critical dimension to the scientific finding has triggered heightened excitement among the media and NGOs. It is the result of yet another modelling exercise carried out by the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It said that the illegal production may be based in East Asia, hinting at China.

While the NGOs and the media, obsessed by the desire to be visible, went high octane and even visited China for their own investigations, other East Asian producers could be South and North Korea and Japan.

In the Meeting of all the Parties to the Montreal Protocol that concluded earlier this month in Quito, Ecuador, the countries showed restraint and took a unanimous and exemplary decision that calls on the international scientific and technical community to engage in rigorous scrutiny — including review of assumptions and models used so far. This decision, importantly, does not mention China or even East Asia as the region for probable illegal activity.

The meeting, however, clearly belonged to Chinese delegation, which demonstrated a brave and balanced approach when all fingers were pointed at it. Overcoming the classical temptation of choosing to be in “denial mode”, China gave details of a nation-wide investigation that it has carried out involving more than 1,000 enterprises since the publication in Nature and the punitive surveillance the country has conducted in unearthing the concealed illegal production and consumption of CFC 11.

Openly sharing the anxiety surrounding the issue, China admitted to identifying locations of illegal production of CFC 11, though much smaller than what Nature stated. That hinted at the possibility of illegal production at additional places. Aiming to further strengthen its compliance measures, China invited international experts to a proposed seminar next year to exchange information on capacity-building for strict compliance. The Chinese delegation also keenly supported the decision for further study and scrutiny.

The Quito meeting finally turned out to be the exemplary international show of what is expected from the collective wisdom of the nations when faced with unexpected emergence of an aberration that poses a threat to the acclaimed success of the Montreal Protocol.

(Rajendra Shende is Chairman, TERRE Policy Centre and a former UNEP Director. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at [email protected] )

When Syed Fariddudin Qutbi, the “khadim” (attendant) of the shrine of 13th century sufi saint Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki in Meharauli, stepped out after offering a floral “chhatra” (a flower-embellished umberella) at the ancient Yogmaya temple located at a stone’s throw from the dargah, all he had to say was that in the small temple sanctum sanctorum suffused with a strong incense and jasmine fragrance, he felt the same tranquility and a “magnificent, invisible power” he feels at the dargah.

Part of the annual cultural festival “Phool Walon Ki Sair” (Festival of Flower Sellers), an initiative that promotes communal harmony and positive cultural exchanges since early the 1800s, many like Qutbi go beyond the bounds of religious identity, and encourage members of other communities to offer flowers and “pankhas” (fans) at places of worship that are considered not “their own”.

Picture Credit : Wikipedia

The roots of the festival go back to the reign of one of the last Mughal emperors and Bahadur Shah Zafar’s father, Akbar Shah II, who was buried next to the dargah.

Legend has it that when his son Mirza Jahangir was imprisoned on the orders of the British, Akbar Shah’s wife vowed that she would offer a blanket at the sufi saint’s dargah upon his release. As fate had it, Shah’s son was released and the blanket was offered. Upon imperial orders, floral offerings were also made at goddess Yogmaya’s temple, which sparked public enthusiasm, causing it to become an annual tradition.

The festival was stopped in the 1940s when the British started their polarising efforts in line with their “divide-and-rule policy” that led to deep rifts between India’s two major religious communities, Mirza Mohtaram Bakht, secretary of the Anjuman Sair-e-Gul Faroshan, the organisers of the fair, told IANS.

He said the festival was revived in 1961-62 by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It has, since then, been a regular occurrence and brings together hundreds of Delhi residents each year, Bakht said.

In today’s deeply polarised milieu where hate crimes against specific communities are just as rampant as the venom spewed against them on social media, the assimilating significance of the week-long festival takes a new turn.

“When our Hindu brothers offer a blanket of flowers at the dargah, members of the Muslim community take a step back and let them take the lead. Similarly, Muslim people are encouraged to offer a floral ‘chhatra’ to Devi Yogmaya. It’s a communion of hearts, and that can only happen if there’s ‘pakeezgi’ in people’s souls,” Qutbi told IANS, adding that he recommends extremists of all religions to at least experience other cultures once.

Rajnish Jindal, another resident of Mehrauli, who has been visiting the festival for 15 years, said that it was a matter of developing comfort with all religions and people from all walks of life.

“You go into a gurdwara, you find peace and comfort, that’s your ‘mahzab’ (faith); same is with a mosque or a temple or a church. It should be a matter of personal belief,” he said.

Not surprisingly, the path of “Phool Walon Ki Sair”, is often laden with thorns and threats.

“People say ‘tum karke toh dikhao, hum dekhte hai tum kaise karte ho’ (We’ll see how you do it); not everyone wants a secular nation that celebrates all its religions. It often happens covertly; 11th-hour permissions, indifference and excuses create hurdles for us, even if there is no direct visible opposition.

“We, however, give it back with our enthusiasm. Truth is always victorious. They can’t stop our caravan,” Bakht, a former geologist and a “proud Delhi-wallah”, said.

Kite flying competitions, processions, wrestling bouts, kabbadi and shehnai recitals mark the first four days of the seven-day festival, with offerings in the dargah and the temple earmarked for the fifth and sixth days.

This year, Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal offered the floral blanket at the dargah on Thursday, and Delhi government’s transport minister Kailash Gahlot offered a floral “chhatra” on Friday, along with members of both communities.

“Phool Walon Ki Sair” closed on Saturday with tableaus from over 11 states and a night-long qawwali singing programme.

(The weekly feature series is part of a positive-journalism project of IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Siddhi Jain can be contacted at [email protected] )

Was it necessary to kill Avni?

Nagpur: The carcass of tigress Avni or T1 arrives for an autopsy at Gorewada Rescue Centre in Nagpur on Nov 3, 2018. Avni or T1, who is believed to be responsible for killing and devouring 13 humans in the Pandharkawada- Ralegaon forests of Yavatmal district in eastern Maharashtra over the last two years. In September this year, the Supreme Court had said Avni or T1, as she is called, could be shot at sight, which prompted a flurry of online petitions seeking pardon for the tigress. (Photo: IANS)

In November 2012, a tigress and her two cubs began a journey from their home in the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh. She had somewhat uncharacteristically left the forest. Over the next two years, this tigress is recorded to have travelled 260 km — from the Amariya region in Pilibhit, along the Devha river, criss-crossing through the densely-populated village areas of Gularia Bithra, Khali Nawada, Bishanpur, Surajpur, Bhadsara, Dhaki, all the way up to Kanpur, where she was finally sighted in February 2014. A close-knit team comprising officials of the state’s Forest Department and tiger conservators of WWF-India were on the trail of this feline family.

The sketchy story from their sightings, pug mark tracking and camera-trap images unraveled that she was accompanied by her cubs for part of the journey, negotiating past villages, through sugarcane fields and grassy landscapes. On several occasions, she would enter the forest for short durations, only to return to her new habitat. The team speculated whether she had moved out of the forest to protect her cubs from aggressive males. Months later, in September 2014, they also spotted her cubs, now sub-adults, back in Amariya, apparently living and operating independently. Not a single incident of attack on humans or livestock was recorded through this epic journey of this majestic feline and her cubs.

Recently, another nursing tigress’s tryst with humans in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal region did not end so peacefully. Thirteen humans had been found dead in Yavatmal’s Ralegaon forest since June 2016, and Avni or T1, a six-year-old tigress with two 10-month-old cubs, was alleged to have been involved in several of these deaths.

According to a Maharashtra Forest Department official, an investigation had proved that she was responsible beyond doubt for at least two of those deaths. On November 2, this “man-eater”, as she was referred to, was shot dead — by a sharp-shooter appointed by the Forest Department — in the Borati jungles that are under the jurisdiction of Ralegaon police, according to news reports that quoted police sources.

Defending the circumstances of Avni’s death, Sunil Limaye, Maharashtra’s additional principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife), explained that the Pandharkawada forests house approximately seven to eight tigers. Avni and her two cubs occupied 160 square km of this forest. Over two years, based on various circumstantial evidence, the department suspected Avni and a male, T2, of having caused several human deaths. At that point, though, the evidence was not forensic.

“In August, we investigated and managed to find clear evidence of Avni being responsible for at least two of the recent killings. Based on these findings the courts ordered us to capture or kill the tigress. The death of the forest dwellers was a grave loss to their families. These people, whose livelihoods depend on the forests, feared for their lives. We followed the courts’ orders and were saddened by the tigress’s death. But we had no other choice,” he said.

Controversies and political banter surround Avni’s death today. Environment activists and animal lovers question whether the mother tigress could have been saved, or at least captured. Meanwhile, a bitter battle of words has erupted between a Union minister and a state minister, both belonging to the same political party. On Friday, November 9, media reported sources in the Maharashtra government as stating that the yet-to-be-released autopsy report “yielded clear evidence of foul play”. It quoted a state government official: “The forensics clearly show that the tigress was not charging at the team, but instead going somewhere else… If she was charging at the team, she would have been shot in her face or chest, not her shoulder.”

Juxtaposing this story of loss of life, both human and animal, against the epic journey of the Pilibhit tigress, raises several questions. Could Avni have been monitored like the Pilibhit tigress to avoid such a tragedy? Could locals have been better informed to control panic about a “man-eater”?

Did Avni truly turn rogue and kill people since 2016? Even as news reports on her post-mortem reveal that she had not eaten anything for at least a week, Dr. Jimmy Borah, tiger biologist and consultant at Panthera, an international organisation working on the conservation of wild cats, said: “A nursing tigress would probably only attack human beings for self-defense, if she feels her cubs are threatened. It is highly unlikely that she would choose humans as food for her cubs.”

Highlighting the apathy in the investigation process, Borah said, “Tigers are very intelligent animals. They might target easy prey, like livestock and humans, if they are injured or old and weak. A healthy animal would never target humans. If the concerned tigress was suspected of killing 13 people since 2016, it should have been investigated much earlier, given the advancement in forensic tests and methods today.”

He said that to safeguard the human population and in the larger interest of saving a wildlife species, it becomes imperative to “remove problem animals” sometimes. “Doing so will help in generating larger public support, especially from communities living in the fringes of protected areas and depending on the forests for their livelihood. However, identifying a problem animal is a herculean task that involves strong evidence, including forensics.” He stated that if an animal is identified as a problem, the best forest departments and states can do is to ensure that standard protocols and guidelines are followed closely.

On Avni’s orphaned cubs, Borah says: “The best option is to leave them alone. If they have learnt to hunt (other animals), they might probably do well. ‘Rescuing’ them would be pointless.”

(In arrangement with Mongabay.com, a source for environmental news reporting and analysis. The views expressed in the article are those of Mongabay.com. Feedback: [email protected])